U.S. PIRG Asbestos031218

What's New

Today, nine governors and the mayor of Washington, D.C. announced that they will create and implement a region-wide policy to curb emissions from transportation, now the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. The announcement marks the next step in the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) process, and represents significant, bipartisan movement towards eliminating the pollution that is causing global warming and harming public health.

In light of recent, high profile data breaches at Marriott and Quora and a new government report about Equifax’s breach, consumer group U.S. PIRG Education Fund is launching an online campaign to protect consumers as they use their credit and debit cards to travel and buy gifts this holiday season.

Today, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released the results of its investigation into the 2017 Equifax data breach. Mike Litt, consumer campaign director for the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, issued the following statement, which includes steps that consumers can take to protect themselves from identity theft.

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Today, nine governors and the mayor of Washington, D.C. announced that they will create and implement a region-wide policy to curb emissions from transportation, now the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. The announcement marks the next step in the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) process, and represents significant, bipartisan movement towards eliminating the pollution that is causing global warming and harming public health.

In light of recent, high profile data breaches at Marriott and Quora and a new government report about Equifax’s breach, consumer group U.S. PIRG Education Fund is launching an online campaign to protect consumers as they use their credit and debit cards to travel and buy gifts this holiday season.

Today, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released the results of its investigation into the 2017 Equifax data breach. Mike Litt, consumer campaign director for the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, issued the following statement, which includes steps that consumers can take to protect themselves from identity theft.

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With a unanimous, bipartisan vote of 38-0, the Massachusetts Senate today passed Automatic Voter Registration. The AVR legislation would establish a system for eligible citizens to automatically register to vote when they interact with a state agency like the Registry of Motor Vehicles or MassHealth. Approximately 680,000 eligible Massachusetts voters are currently not registered to vote.

By 2050, nearly 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities. While strong urban centers provide many important benefits, cities also face unique challenges. Despite accounting for just 2 percent of landmass, cities produce 70 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. This sad reality jeopardizes the health of urban residents and the health of our planet. That's why today, U.S. PIRG is proud to announce the support of 66 mayors, representing an estimated combined total 6.4 million people, in calling on the United States Department of Transportation to move forward with new rules that could require localities to track, measure, and take steps to reduce carbon emissions from transportation sources.

U.S. PIRG joined a broad coalition to deliver one million petitions from Americans, including U.S. PIRG members and supporters, calling on President Obama to shine a light on dark money, or secret political spending.

For the past thirty years, our sister organization U.S. PIRG Education Fund has taken a close look at the safety of toys sold in stores. Their reports have led to more than 150 regulatory actions. In November 2015, they released our 30th annual Trouble in Toyland report.

In our democracy, the size of your wallet shouldn’t determine the volume of your voice. In 2015, we helped win reforms in Maine and Seattle to ensure that more Americans have a greater say in our elections. Seattle’s Initiative-122 empowers small donors with “democracy vouchers” that can be donated to local candidates and lowers the cap on contributions. In Maine, the state’s Clean Elections Act was improved by strengthening campaign finance disclosure laws and offering qualifying candidates increased public funding.

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With the CFPB under new management less interested in consumer protection and law enforcement, our new report highlights steps states, counties and cities are taking to protect consumers better. Coincidentally, the report was completed on the same day that the U.S. Senate confirmed Kathy Kraninger to a 5-year term as CFPB director. She replaces her mentor, the OMB director Mick Mulvaney, who has been serving as acting CFPB director for just over a year.

Most of America’s school and transit buses run on diesel, a highly-polluting fuel, but there is a better option. All-electric buses are here, and they’re cleaner, healthier and save money for transit agencies, school districts and bus contractors to run in the long-term.

Across institutions and majors, an average of 32% of courses included access codes among the required course materials. At institutional bookstores, the average cost of an access code sold solo – i.e., not bundled with a textbook or primary course material of any form – was $100.24.

Across institutions and majors, an average of 32% of courses included access codes among the required course materials. At institutional bookstores, the average cost of an access code sold solo – i.e., not bundled with a textbook or primary course material of any form – was $100.24.

Electronic waste can pose health and safety risks if you don’t dispose of it properly. So, this holiday season if you are replacing an older or broken piece of electronics with a new gift make sure the product, its components or the materials in the product end up in the right place -- and get reused or recycled if possible. Here’s how you can responsibly handle your used electronics.

Today, 7 member groups of the European Consumer Organization (BEUC) asked each of their national Data Protection Authorities to investigate Google Android's smartphone locational data collection practices following an investigative report by the Norwegian Consumer Council (Forbrukerrådet) finding that Google may be in violation of the new European GDPR privacy law. All the groups are members of the U.S. PIRG-backed TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue, which itself followed up on the report and EU actions with a letter to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Meanwhile, as the Senate prepared for an afternoon FTC oversight hearing today where Facebook may be a focus, we joined leading groups in a separate letter to complain to the FTC about its biased staff report that adopts unsubstantiated industry claims in defense of an FTC call to the administration for weak baseline privacy choices.

Next year, a highly-anticipated privacy and data rights battle will occur in Congress. Powerful special interests from Google to Facebook are responding to the new European General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) by seeking to quash any similar effort to protect U.S. consumers while simultaneously seeking to preempt a new California privacy law before it takes effect in 2020. Will we continue as data collector products, not their customers, or will we gain control over our own financial DNA? The state PIRGs are in this one; guess which side we're on. Today we joined 34 leading groups in issuing shared Privacy Principles.

One year after announcing the biggest data breach in history, Equifax still hasn’t been held accountable or provided the information and tools consumers need to protect themselves. Since Equifax won’t help protect consumers, U.S. PIRG is stepping in.